Powell joins cross-country cyclists on mission to document American cancer experience with summerlong ride
“Everyone tells me I’m nuts,” said the senior at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and native of Homer Glen who is now in training for the average 70 miles a day she’ll log during the 2018 Illini 4000 Bike America ride.
Illini 4000 is a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising money for cancer research while documenting the American cancer experience through The Portraits Project, a series of stories told by cancer survivors, patients and caregivers. Team members, most of them University of Illinois students, raise money and gather biographies of people they meet along the route.
Among those interviewed for the project: a Utah mother of five whose two sons were diagnosed with cancer. A woman from Deerfield whose rare form of duodenal cancer will require her to receive chemotherapy treatment the rest of her life. A pastor from Montana whose family was on a mission in Papua, New Guinea, when his wife found a mass in her breast.
The stories, gathered from the road, are of triumph and heartbreak, of strength and determination, of survival and loss. Together they paint a portrait of the American cancer experience.
“We’re trying to put together a network for cancer patients,” Powell said. “So they can have something to help support them through their struggles, something to show them they’re not really alone.”
The video interviews “show what’s happening around the country and help connect community members with different organizations around them,” she said.
A much-needed benefit, Powell said, is “the stories create a bond” among survivors, family members and caregivers.
“Once I found out about this ride and how it’s trying to build a community, it meant a lot to be a part of it,” she said.
Enough to take on a 78-day grueling challenge that will take her over mountains, across rivers and to the foot of various national landmarks.
Alia Alsikafi, a Lake Bluff sophomore who went on the ride last year and heads marketing for the group, said, “The Portraits Project is a huge reason why riders can get through the grueling trip.”
“Anyone we encounter who’s been affected by cancer and wants to share their story, we give them that opportunity,” she said.
Hearing the stories of struggle and determination, Alsikafi said, gives the cyclists the strength they need to push through.
At the end of the ride, Alsikafi said, “People ask, ‘How did you do it?’ In general most of us say we didn’t think we could do it. But the organization is built on a lot of mini goals that add up to this big trip. We all have this unreserved strength that is not brought out unless you’re the kind of person trying to find your limits.”
The mission can have soul-searching benefits for the riders too. Alsikafi said she came away with 24 new best friends and a new component to add to her previously declared psychology major: pre-med.
“I like to be hands-on, and I have a passion to help others. Hearing the stories of people was therapeutic for them, but for me, it changed my life,” she said. “Now I want to be the doctor to help these people and get them out of that physical state. I came back to campus with a new goal of what I want to commit my career to.”
Powell, who attended St. Cyril Methodius grammar school in Lemont and Mother McAuley High School in Mount Greenwood, said, “I’ve had a lot of family members affected by cancer, so I think it’s my time to step up and do something about it. I lost three grandparents to cancer when I was pretty young. At the time I didn’t really know what cancer was. In high school I lost my uncle and then my aunt. Seeing them die — it’s a lot different when you can understand it. It kind of put in perspective how short life is.”
It hammered home a message: “You gotta make the most of it. Because you don’t know how much time you have,” she said.
Powell said the 2018 ride, which includes cyclists from Naperville, Northbrook and Plainfield, as well as Shanghai, China, kicks off May 19 from New York’s Central Park. The team will average 70 miles per day until it pulls up to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge more than two months later.
The journey also will afford the graphics design major one more grand adventure before she heads into the world of work. As a college freshman, Powell was the youngest member of a study-abroad group that traveled to New Zealand.
Each rider agrees to a fundraising goal of $4,000 and a training schedule, she said. First semester is indoor, focusing on cardio as well as abdominal and leg workouts, and the second semester involves logging miles on the bikes.
Alsikafi said last year’s team raised $110,000. Beneficiaries include national and local organizations, including the American Cancer Society, Be Positive, Camp Kessam and the Damon Runyan Foundation, she said.
Illini 4000 was started on the university campus in 2007 by a group of students in the same dorm who wanted to make a difference in a fun and hands-on learning environment, Alsikafi said.
“They decided one summer to bike from coast to coast. As years passed, they got more people involved, and it became a nonprofit organization,” she said.
The 4000 denotes the fundraising goal and the average number of miles logged on each summer’s ride. Each student takes an active role in planning the trip, scouting out free overnight accommodations for the team and contributing to the story collection.
Among cancer survivors featured in The Portraits Project (
In her interview, she says, “(Cancer has) taught me to take one day at a time and to lower my expectations. I shouldn’t expect people to treat me differently because I had cancer. It affects everybody. Even if you don’t have cancer yourself, you know people who have it, or you know people whose family is going through this.”
It is the openness, the rawness, the poignancy, Alsikafi said, that gets riders over mountains and across prairies.
“You get to the Golden Gate Bridge,” she said, “and it feels like a dream.”
For more information on Illini 4000, go to
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